I was at Regency Court (the plaza across from regency) and saw that Sports Authority was closing. Not suprising really, they seem to be hurting nationally with competition from Dicks and Academy.
A few months ago OfficeDepot moved down the street, this leaves Rooms To Go as the only anchor in there. There's still lots of shops in there though (woodcraft, honey baked ham, etc).
That is such an awkward shopping center in terms of access and sight design.
Quote from: riverside planner on December 24, 2013, 10:35:09 AM
That is such an awkward shopping center in terms of access and sight design.
I wouldn't argue that :) The owner of the plaza recently redid the whole thing. New facing on the building, resurfaced the parking lot and added trees to it.
That longhorn does pretty good still.
Regency & Area is just begging for someone with deep pockets to revitalize it. There's so many people in that area it's such a missed opportunity.
Quote from: coredumped on December 24, 2013, 11:54:43 AM
Quote from: riverside planner on December 24, 2013, 10:35:09 AM
That is such an awkward shopping center in terms of access and sight design.
I wouldn't argue that :) The owner of the plaza recently redid the whole thing. New facing on the building, resurfaced the parking lot and added trees to it.
That longhorn does pretty good still.
Regency & Area is just begging for someone with deep pockets to revitalize it. There's so many people in that area it's such a missed opportunity.
That is why i am, and always will be fond of the area. Regency Mall and the area just needs a reboot. There is plenty of traffic and residents for the area to thrive again. And to be honest, the area is fine. The mall is what has died.
The area is viable but new growth three miles down the street is eating its market base. That will make life as a retail center hard to maintain.
Seems the retailers are moving down the street to newer gigs. Lots of stuff going to Atlantic and Kernan, at the expense of the aging Regency area.
Quote from: duvaldude08 on December 24, 2013, 11:59:16 AM
That is why i am, and always will be fond of the area. Regency Mall and the area just needs a reboot. There is plenty of traffic and residents for the area to thrive again. And to be honest, the area is fine. The mall is what has died.
I agree, being such dense area you know people drive right past regency to go to the SJTC. Regency needs to give them a reason to stop in instead of just driving by.
I wonder how the hunt for a buyer for Regency is going. If that mall could make a bit of a come back I'd expect the whole area to pick up, big time.
Quote from: stephendare on December 24, 2013, 12:30:13 PM
yes. thats how neighborhoods decline.
Doesn't have to be that way but that's the pattern our local zoning regulations create. One of the worst things with Mayoral change was the loss of Killingsworth before he had the chance to revamp our zoning situation.
QuoteThe area is viable but new growth three miles down the street is eating its market base.
I seem to remember a conversation with Simms here where he was trying to rebut my premise that strip malls are by and large predatory in nature. Regency is the perfect example.
I think if some "hipster*" type place would go in the area it would help, something like Moxi or BJs. The restaurant scene on atlantic does very well (ole, la nop, ocharlys, ale house, outback, longhorn, etc etc etc....).
*Not meant to be derogatory, but I mean "hip" places.
Quote from: thelakelander on December 24, 2013, 12:13:38 PM
Seems the retailers are moving down the street to newer gigs. Lots of stuff going to Atlantic and Kernan, at the expense of the aging Regency area.
Any idea why the Avenues isn't struggling as much as Regency? According to gmaps, regency is just a bit further to the SJTC than the avenues is to the town center. The avenues has some good competition too.
Quote from: coredumped on December 24, 2013, 05:23:32 PM
Quote from: thelakelander on December 24, 2013, 12:13:38 PM
Seems the retailers are moving down the street to newer gigs. Lots of stuff going to Atlantic and Kernan, at the expense of the aging Regency area.
Any idea why the Avenues isn't struggling as much as Regency? According to gmaps, regency is just a bit further to the SJTC than the avenues is to the town center. The avenues has some good competition too.
Higher income levels surrounding the Avenues, plus close proximity to Mandarin and St. Johns County.
West Arlington tends to have lower income levels, East Arlington is now being served by Atlantic/ Kernan and the 9A/ 295 overpass is easy to access.
Quote from: coredumped on December 24, 2013, 05:23:32 PM
Quote from: thelakelander on December 24, 2013, 12:13:38 PM
Seems the retailers are moving down the street to newer gigs. Lots of stuff going to Atlantic and Kernan, at the expense of the aging Regency area.
Any idea why the Avenues isn't struggling as much as Regency? According to gmaps, regency is just a bit further to the SJTC than the avenues is to the town center. The avenues has some good competition too.
Regency was in major decline when the SJTC went in to fill that void. Avenues never really struggled, and has continued to maintain and expand over the past decade.
Quote from: stephendare on December 24, 2013, 12:30:13 PM
yes. thats how neighborhoods decline. and sadly, residential demographics follow retail demographics.
quite often, the reverse is true...part of Regency's problem is the decline in average household income in the surrounding area (as compared to other parts of the region).
That said, I spent some time at Regency Square today...and the parts of the mall that are still occupied seemed to be doing pretty good.
Quote from: ProjectMaximus on December 24, 2013, 06:32:55 PM
Quote from: coredumped on December 24, 2013, 05:23:32 PM
Quote from: thelakelander on December 24, 2013, 12:13:38 PM
Seems the retailers are moving down the street to newer gigs. Lots of stuff going to Atlantic and Kernan, at the expense of the aging Regency area.
Any idea why the Avenues isn't struggling as much as Regency? According to gmaps, regency is just a bit further to the SJTC than the avenues is to the town center. The avenues has some good competition too.
Regency was in major decline when the SJTC went in to fill that void. Avenues never really struggled, and has continued to maintain and expand over the past decade.
Avenues has also retooled....since Simon owns both malls (plus Orange Park) they are positioning them for different purposes.
Maybe Regency Mall could be re-purposed successfully such as the short-lived Grand Boulevard Mall which is now mostly an educational institution.
I wonder if the Regency Square Mall became an outlet mall with upscale outlets like Neiman Marcus Last Call sort of like the Dolphin Mall in Miami. What if it had stores that are not offered at SJTC or The Avenues. I wonder if that would bring it back to life.
This was done with Philips Mall in the late 1980s/early 1990s and it failed miserably.
I think the outlets in St. Augustine already have this need covered on a regional basis. The growth of places like Ross, TJ Maxx, Stein Mart, Marshall's, etc. probably don't help either.
Thanks Lakelander. I wasn't aware that this had been tried before.
Several of the commenters pointed out the particular causes:
Decline in national economy due to the poorly considered move toward globalism is destroying the economies of the developed world while overwhelming that of economies in the undeveloped world.
Continued bottom feeding of the local economy. Political leadership here works to attract jobs at any cost. These businesses do not add tax revenues due to the sweetheart deals made to attract them. They pay such bad wages that their employees gravitate toward low cost existing housing which add to neighborhood tax funded burdens like conversions and expansion to waste water systems, and reconstruction of streets. These poorly paid employees do not patronize shops like Dillard's.
Continued toleration of sprawl, both residential and commercial continues to deteriorate Jacksonville. Defocussed development makes sustainability in property values difficult to impossible. Adding new development in this time of delusional economics is very poorly considered, at best, and continues to massively burden all infrastructure at a time where there is ever less money to deal with those burdens.
SJTC and its Northside counterpart are doomed to go the same way as Regency, in time.
The salvation of Regency Point, and Arlington, will come from home owners determining to stay in place and improve their homes and neighborhoods. It was that attitude that saved Riverside. It is an attitude that continues to struggle in Springfield. Densifying and redevelopment is what saves legacy development.
Unless their is a major change in our political system, nationally, I do not see a resurgance in the national economy that will drive rapid redevelopment and local economic strengthening. The major focus points of capital are too invested in the speculative crapshoot of the stock market to put their money to work to produce anything of substance that meets the needs of the only remaining body of workers that have the cash left to buy. We have permitted the capitalists to outsource more than twenty-five trillion dollars over the last fifty years in return for getting about four trillion in profit stuck in accounts outside the country. They won't repatriate that money because it would be badly eroded by taxes. If we are to re-industrialize, based on renewable energy, it will require the citizens working through the government to do it. If we don't, the economic slide will continue and accelerate. As that happens, the deterioration of Regency Point will be a trivial consideration.
I am surprised that Sports Authority stayed open that long. Went there a few times and it was a ghost town.
I was just thinking that one of the problems with the stores in the Regency Court and Regency Point areas were that they seemed to lack major differentiation from other stores in other locations. For instance: what was Sports Authority doing that wasn't being done as well or better by Dick's, Gander Mountain, and Acadamy.
Does anyone else think that the race to the bottom only produces losers?
Quote from: Glenn Caton on December 26, 2013, 11:15:35 AM
I was just thinking that one of the problems with the stores in the Regency Court and Regency Point areas were that they seemed to lack major differentiation from other stores in other locations. For instance: what was Sports Authority doing that wasn't being done as well or better by Dick's, Gander Mountain, and Acadamy.
Does anyone else think that the race to the bottom only produces losers?
I think for that shopping center, it is/was convenience or lack thereof. I don't know what it was like 10-15 years ago. But now it is not the easiest shopping plaza to get to. If you are on Southside going north, you don't see any of the storefronts. And as you drive by, there are no exits for a mile or so. If you are going south on Soutside, I can't think of the easiest way to get there.
QuoteI think for that shopping center, it is/was convenience or lack thereof.
Regency used to be a regional draw. It drew shoppers from not only the Arlington area, but also from Nassau County and into South Georgia.
Now, River City Marketplace fills that niche. Regency didn't re-invent itself when it had the opportunity, and RCMP is now one of the hottest new retail centers in the Southeast.
^Pretty much. RCM and the new power centers are doing to Regency what Regency did to Gateway in the 70s/80s.
I'd look it up but I'm on my way to Miami at the moment. In 1967, you also had a lot less competition. Then, Regency was the cream of the crop. Now it won't crack the top five of viable regional centers in Jax.
Oh, it's in competition. Just look at the anchors and who they compete against. That area can't support a million square foot mall by itself. It couldn't in its heyday and it sure can't now.
Good points, Stephen!
Excess retail space in the face of a contracting retail sector.
One of the things that has driven retail out of the malls has been the cut out of gross sales that mall developers take.I have no idea what it is now, but it used to exceed 5% of gross. When you are in an 11% business, and you have to cough up 6-8% plus 3% for credit cards, you are now in a 1% business. Even if your rent is higher in a strip center, your landlord may not want a taste of the gross. At those profit levels, you have to do a hell of a lot of volume.
Additionally, you are not running your customers past a bunch of potential competitors.
The transportation problems you bring up are the natural and inevitable byproducts of sprawl. Think of the benefits of four twenty story parking garages and a climate controled regional bus terminal at Regency. You could use all those acres of parking for additional floorspace, as needed.
The downside to this strategy: you have to turn down a developer.
Quote from: stephendare on December 26, 2013, 11:41:33 AM
But if you took all the retail expansion into regency court, and the area behind regency (Ross, Bealls, Home Depot, Lowes, all the restaurants, etc, and the unwise development over where books a million is (tgifridays, starbucks, panera, best buy) and you compressed it back into regency mall, then you would actually have a superpower of a shopping experience again.
That is an excellent and important point - there's still a LOT in the Regency area, I would argue more than the avenues. The problem is that it's so far spread out. I think you're on to something Stephen, if something drastic were to happen like plowing down the old part of the mall and maybe talking in to a lot of those retailers to move to the new regency mall you'd have quite the retail outlet.
I don't know what the incentive would be for them to move over there. There's quite a bit of traffic on the expressway where it meets atlantic, so from a visibility standpoint it's a no-brainer.
What's around Regency isn't unlike what you would encounter around most malls across the country that have been open longer than a decade (except half of the strip malls near Regency have high vacancy rates themselves). While consolidation into the mall would be cool for Regency's sake, it's pretty unrealistic. You won't find many malls anchored with a Home Depot, Lowes, or Bealls. These chains are more likely to tear down old malls and build their stores over the old footprints. These chains and the owners of the strip centers they are located in have no financial desire or incentive to consolidate into a +40 year old enclosed traditional mall.
I think Regency is done, as far as it being 100% filled with retail in its current footprint. Sears and JCPenney (as retail chains) are on their last leg, Dillard's already gave up on operating a regular store and Belk is about to leave for Sleiman's new center at Atlantic and Kernan. At this point, I don't know what the right mix is for the center but I seriously doubt it's 100% retail.
I totally agree Lake. I work in the area and there is lots of successful retail. Roosevelt mall divided up, Belk stayed and other stores moved in centers which works. For the life of me I don't see the attraction at the Kernan/Atlantic area. The traffic and mobility is not shopper friendly at all in it's current where Regency does have a much better traffic flow in multiple directions. The movie theater at Regency is always busy along with the stores and restaurants behind the mall. What is going to happen at Kernan/Atlantic in 5 years ? I look forward to the property the mall is on being mixed retail and other businesses - even an office park would be nice with the current office buildings that are in place. There is also a new decent size subdivision in Kendal Town off the Southside connector being built which will help boost area shopping. Here's the link http://www.lennar.com/New-Homes/Florida/Jacksonville-St-Augustine/Jacksonville/Mill-Creek-at-Kendall-Town#t_h&s_1
Quote from: thelakelander on December 26, 2013, 10:40:41 PM
At this point, I don't know what the right mix is for the center but I seriously doubt it's 100% retail.
The shift away from retail is already occurring. There is a laser golf (whatever that is) entertainment venue in the mall now
I predict it will become a church like Normandy Mall. ;-)
I no longer enjoy going to indoor malls, they seem dull and static.
Outdoor malls like the St Johns Town Center do have their charms but I'm really loving smaller urban style retail strips like Avondale, Riverside & San Marco. I see so much potential for Edgewood Avenue in Murray Hill. I can visualize what a great shopping & dinning area that will become within the next five years.
I don't understand the whole 'anti-indoor mall' thing. As long as a particular area is safe, I don't put much thought into whether I'm inside or outside before I walk into a store. Hell, if anything the indoor malls' advantages are obvious (the weather). Although many indoor malls have closed due to their older age, economic reasons, etc; Contrary to popular belief, indoor malls aren't going anywhere.
Quote from: I-10east on December 27, 2013, 07:54:58 PM
I don't understand the whole 'anti-indoor mall' thing. As long as a particular area is safe, I don't put much thought into whether I'm inside or outside before I walk into a store. Hell, if anything the indoor malls' advantages are obvious (the weather). Although many indoor malls have closed due to their older age, economic reasons, etc; Contrary to popular belief, indoor malls aren't going anywhere.
I agree, I find indoor malls to be great for the weather reason alone. another issue with places like the town center is you're more likely to drive your car when going to another store. Whereas in a mall, even as huge as mall of America, you'll end up walking the whole thing.
Operating costs for indoor malls are higher for the entities that run them. Just look at the Landing. No money is being made with all that food court seating. However, someone has to pay to air condition that space and keep it clean. If you can profit just as much without the extra operating costs of an enclosed non-leasable space, why not?
Quote from: thelakelander on December 30, 2013, 09:33:01 PM
No money is being made with all that food court seating.
Okay, but you can say that about any mall that has a successful food court too. The Avenues, Orange Park Mall, The Oaks Mall in G-ville, the Mall of America (which has very efficient heating and cooling BTW).
Quote from: coredumped on December 24, 2013, 10:28:25 AM
I was at Regency Court (the plaza across from regency) and saw that Sports Authority was closing. Not suprising really, they seem to be hurting nationally with competition from Dicks and Academy.
A few months ago OfficeDepot moved down the street, this leaves Rooms To Go as the only anchor in there. There's still lots of shops in there though (woodcraft, honey baked ham, etc).
Perfect spot for a new ghetto hip hop club...is Plush still open?
Quote from: Coolyfett on December 31, 2013, 10:12:30 AM
Perfect spot for a new ghetto hip hop club...is Plush still open?
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v121/BananaClock/SCB/f067e0dd.gif)
Quote from: Coolyfett on December 31, 2013, 10:12:30 AM
Perfect spot for a new ghetto hip hop club...is Plush still open?
[/quote]
I sense disdain for "ghetto" hip hop demographic. Perhaps a more "country" themed establishment will open there ... making the local t.v. stations "Breaking News" segments with with late night alcohol induced antics. ::)
I posted elsewhere on MJ on what happened to Palm Beach Mall. Same era as Regency, similar anchors.
(http://media2.wptv.com//photo/2013/09/29/WPTV_Palm_Beach_Outlet_Mall_construction_(5)_20130929132909_640_480.JPG)
They just tore it down and are turning it into a major outlet center. I think the JC Penney will stay and they are designing the new outlet mall around it. It's proximity to I-95 was the big driver for the developer.
Unfortunately Regency doesn't have the same geography as Palm Beach Mall.
(http://media2.wptv.com//photo/2013/11/16/Palm_Beach_Outlet_Mall_construction_(5)_20131116140113_640_480.JPG)
http://pboutletmall.com/ (http://pboutletmall.com/)
Regency will come back, as they develop the land and communities around it. Just need more infill in the form of new housing. The recession has not been kind to Regency.
Quote from: mtraininjax on January 01, 2014, 08:38:15 PM
Just need more infill in the form of new housing.
Already happening with the new homes behind Regency. I was by there the other day and say some houses already up (probably the model homes) on the west side of the connector across from the HHGregg.
Quote from: mtraininjax on January 01, 2014, 08:38:15 PM
The recession has not been kind to Regency.
Nor baymeadows area :(
That would be awesome if Regency makes a comeback.
Quote from: I-10east on January 01, 2014, 10:24:31 PM
That would be awesome if Regency makes a comeback.
Everyone has font memories of the area so hopefully it does. Here's the article:
http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=540080
It's a big area, you can see it in google maps, it's the field to the left/west of the connector:
(http://i.imgur.com/W70tbfs.jpg)
I noticed that on those Mike Davidson Ford commercials, now they act like they're too good to use Regency Square as the area that they're located like they used to; Now they just say "On Atlantic". Boy, that's really specific!!! Way to act too 'boujie' for the area Mike Davidson, geez....
Quote from: I-10east on January 04, 2014, 09:38:33 AM
I noticed that on those Mike Davidson Ford commercials, now they act like they're too good to use Regency Square as the area that they're located like they used to; Now they just say "On Atlantic". Boy, that's really specific!!! Way to act too 'boujie' for the area Mike Davidson, geez....
I noticed that too, I used to sing along to their jingle "Mike Davidson, Mike Davidson Fo-ord.....
at regency square"
It sounded so weird without that the last time I heard it.
In other Regency related news, the Olive Garden which is always packed is going to undergo a renovation:
http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=541598
QuoteOlive Garden is renovating its Regency area restaurant. Contractor Big Service Inc. is providing interior and exterior accessibility upgrades, at 2,500 square feet, at a project cost of $60,000.